About

DITAWriter is Keith Schengili-Roberts. Formerly the manager of a documentation and localization team within the graphics engineering group at AMD, I helped bring my team of technical writers into the bright new world of DITA way back in 2006. Prior to becoming manager I worked as an Information Architect (or really, “Documentation Architect“), redesigning the content deliverables and moving the group from an unstructured FrameMaker-based toolchain to one that uses a DITA Content Management System (in this case, IXIASOFT‘s DITA CMS).

It’s funny how sometimes things come full circle, as I now work at IXIASOFT as a DITA Specialist, doing Information Architect work on behalf of their clients. And loving every minute of it!

Prior to joining Ixiaosft I worked as a DITA consultant for the U.K. firm Mekon, doing IA work and consulting for the likes of ARM, Schlumberger, eBay Deutschland and Infineon. A terrific company and if you are looking for an independent consultant firm with deep knowledge of DITA in Europe, look no further.

I have a real interest in learning more about DITA, particularly in how other people and firms are using it. I started a blog about it gives me a forum to share my own views and experiences, as well as those of other people I have met who bring their own working knowledge from other domains.

13 thoughts on “About”

Just wanted to let you know that my team at BTI Systems uses DITA to develop technical documentation. Please add us to your list.

Great initiative, by the way. I have been curious about how many companies are using DITA. I wish DITA was more widely used outside of technical documentation though… I would like to easily leverage content from Marketing and other groups within our company and vice-versa, but our content is somewhat segregated in our CMS.

Our company (Interactive Intelligence, Inc.) is listed because we mentioned DITA in a job posting. I added that reference to DITA as “a plus” qualification for the first time a few months ago. The reason is because we decided to move toward adopting DITA and a CMS here, but we are still in the planning and proposal stage. I can’t say we are using DITA yet, but we hope to be some time this year.

There are a lot of educational resources available for people like yourself wanting to learn about DITA. I’d recommend taking a look at my recently updated listing of DITA-related videos and look for the “DITA Quick Start for Authors” videos, which are good.

I also find that people learn best when they have a chance to “play” with the DITA Toolkit, which can be found here. Install it, read the instructions and start playing around with the example code provided to help you get a handle on how the mechanics work.

I am afraid I have no suggestions on how you can get around the “Great Firewall” in China. I know your frustration, from having tried to access YouTube while over there on business.

I don’t know if Vimeo is blocked in China; you might want to check to see if the links to the videos on that website are valid. There are also a few company-hosted videos in the list, such as a few from oXygen, Adobe and one or two other manufacturers which I hope would not be blocked to you.

Typically a DITA consultant may have several roles to play. They may be called upon to help validate a Request for Information on behalf of a client to ensure they get the best CCMS/other tools that they need. Or a DITA consultant might play more of an Information Architect/Content Strategy role, helping to guide an initial implementation of DITA content within a tech docs organization. They might also specialize in XSL (something I would recommend) in order to tweak the layout of content for various output formats. For other ideas, take a look at the DITA Consultants page at: http://www.ditawriter.com/dita-consultants-listing/. Cheers!